The Tragically Tangled Life Of Hunter Biden Explained
Whether it's fair or not, presidential standards are often applied to the children of U.S. presidents, and perhaps none has endured more scrutiny than Hunter Biden. Here's a look at his complicated life so far.
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00:00Whether it's fair or not, presidential standards are often applied to the children of U.S.
00:05presidents, and perhaps none has endured more scrutiny than Hunter Biden.
00:09Here's a look at his complicated life so far.
00:12In December 1972, just a month after 30-year-old Joe Biden was elected to the U.S. Senate,
00:17his first wife, Nelia, took their three children — toddlers Bo and Hunter and 13-month-old Naomi — to
00:23go shopping for a Christmas tree while Joe interviewed potential staffers. As they passed
00:28through an intersection, a truck collided with their vehicle, severely injuring Bo and Hunter
00:32and killing Nelia and Naomi.
00:34My wife was dead, my daughter was dead,
00:39and I wasn't sure how my sons were gonna make it."
00:41After publishing his memoir, Beautiful Things, Hunter opened up about how the incident
00:46contributed to his substance abuse issues later in life. In a conversation with CBS News Sunday,
00:51he examined the reasons behind his lifelong struggles with addiction, saying,
00:55I am more convinced now that trauma is at the center of it."
00:58Asked if he was referring to the loss of his mother, he said,
01:00Yeah, absolutely, and I don't know why I had such a hard time ever admitting that."
01:05Biden has often said that his first memory is of Bo telling him he loved him as they lay together
01:10in a hospital bed, in the room in which Joe Biden would be sworn in as a U.S. senator.
01:16In 1994, Biden wed Kathleen Buell after a year-long courtship during which she became
01:22pregnant with their first child. Everything seemed fine for the young couple until the
01:25early 2000s, when Biden's new status as partner in a private lobbying firm began to cause problems.
01:31His enviable salary, combined with long, boozy nights out with clients,
01:36contributed to his developing drinking problem, which got harder to shake as the years went on.
01:40In her memoir, If We Break, Buell shared that Hunter's brief stretches of sobriety
01:45would give way to increasingly long stretches of drinking,
01:48during which he tried to hide the extent of his problem. Buell wrote,
01:52Each time he drank, the process of getting him to admit he wasn't sober took longer and
01:56was more exhausting. And as his brother Bo fought the brain cancer that would eventually kill him,
02:01Biden's struggle went from bad to much, much worse.
02:04Bo Biden brought to his work a mighty heart. He brought to his family a mighty heart."
02:11After Bo's death in 2015, Biden turned to smoking crack, at which point, Buell wrote,
02:16I'd lost the ability to be surprised by him.
02:19As Biden's drinking began to put a serious strain on his marriage,
02:23he confided in the one person he felt could understand his pain — his brother's widow,
02:28Hallie Biden. In a 2019 New Yorker profile, Biden recalled,
02:32We were sharing a very specific grief. I started to think of Hallie as the only
02:37person in my life who understood my loss. But it wasn't long before the friendship
02:41became more intimate — a situation that was revealed to Buell by way of text messages
02:45discovered by her daughter, Finnegan Biden. Buell filed for divorce in 2016, and Biden and Hallie
02:51tried to make a go of an actual relationship, with Hunter even asking for, and receiving,
02:56his father's blessing. The public scrutiny, however, proved to be too much, as Biden told
03:01the New Yorker,
03:02All we got was s**t from everybody, all the time. It was really hard,
03:06and I realized that I'm not helping anybody."
03:08The couple split in 2019.
03:11In 2011, in the midst of his substance struggles, Biden became friends with Greg Keighley, an
03:16Australian-American who was full of exciting stories about his time as an intelligence
03:20officer in the Royal Australian Navy. Upon relocating to the U.S., Keighley had applied
03:25for and received an age waiver to join the U.S. Navy as a reserve officer at the age of 40,
03:30and he tried to convince Biden that it wasn't too late for him to do the same.
03:34Keighley told the New Yorker,
03:35My message to him was,
03:36If you feel the call to serve, which I encouraged, it doesn't really matter what your rank is.
03:41It is that you're serving your country.
03:43Hunter took that message to heart and acted upon it.
03:45We have a lot of bad judgment in my family. My son, who's over 40,
03:49just joined the United States Navy, is about to be sworn in as an officer.
03:53At the age of 43, with a letter of recommendation from Keighley,
03:56Biden was granted not one but two waivers, one due to his age and the other due to the
04:01fact that he disclosed his prior drug use to the Navy, which has a strict zero-tolerance policy.
04:06Unfortunately, that very policy meant that Biden's naval career was over before it started.
04:11In 2013, Biden tested positive for cocaine. In 2014, he was administratively discharged,
04:17leaving him once more in search of a direction.
04:20In and out of rehab 70 times.
04:22Say it nicer to me. Sought treatment for an issue like most people.
04:29In 2019, a woman named London Alexis Roberts came forward to claim that her infant daughter,
04:34Navy, who was born in 2018, was also Biden's.
04:38He denied it, but a paternity test proved he was the father.
04:41At a paternity hearing in Arkansas in 2020, Biden's attorneys moved to delay the matter
04:46until after that year's presidential election. But the motion was denied,
04:50and the case was settled quickly. The terms of the settlement weren't disclosed until 2023,
04:55when the case was reopened at Biden's attorney's request to reduce the amount of his child support
05:00payments. At that time, it was revealed that Biden had been paying Roberts $20,000 per month,
05:05forking over a grand total of about $750,000 since the case had been settled.
05:10Biden has a go-to outlet for dealing with his demons. He's a painter,
05:14specializing in mixed-media works, and in 2021,
05:18his work was showcased in a show titled The Journey Home at the Soho Gallery of George Burgess.
05:23What's the goal eventually?
05:25Um, no goal. That's the perfect part about it. It just literally keeps me sane.
05:30It was initially projected that the prices of the 25 pieces on display would range up to $500,000,
05:36which drew scrutiny from the Republican majority in the House of Representatives. Burgess, though,
05:41shot that figure down, acknowledging to The New York Times that some pieces might sell in the
05:45lower six-figure range while asserting that only he and Biden would know who the buyers were and
05:50how much they paid. He added that,
05:51"...Hunter will go down as a great artist for this century."
05:54Washington Post art critic Sebastian Smee disagreed, telling CNN,
05:59"...To me, Biden seems a bit of a dabbler. His work has the feeling of an afterthought.
06:03If I were a museum curator, I would struggle to find compelling reasons to share it with the public."
06:08Asked by Vanity Fair art columnist Nate Freeman for a response to those questioning his talent,
06:13Biden replied,
06:14"...Other than, f**k him?"
06:16In late 2019, Biden married South African activist and filmmaker Melissa Cohen,
06:21just six days after they met. He told ABC News,
06:24"...I instantly fell in love with her, and then I've fallen in love with her more every day."
06:28In the face of the renewed publicity around Biden during that time,
06:32Cohen was defiant in a manner befitting a member of the Biden family, asking ABC News,
06:37"...How many investigations can be done? But if it would bring peace of mind to whoever
06:41needs peace of mind brought to this, I know we have peace of mind. We're okay. We live in truth,
06:46so sure."
06:47The couple wasted no time in expanding their family. In March 2020,
06:51Cohen gave birth to a baby boy, whom they'd named Joseph Robinette
06:55Beau Biden III, in honor of Hunter's father and his late beloved brother.
07:00There's been a great deal of speculation about a certain laptop Biden supposedly took in for
07:04service at a Delaware repair shop, then abandoned. The contents of the laptop's hard drive range from
07:10the extremely personal to the potentially politically explosive, including completely
07:14unsubstantiated rumors that a trove of emails indicate that Joe Biden profited from his son's
07:19business dealings with foreign entities. A number of news organizations, including The Washington
07:24Post, have conducted forensic examinations of the hard drive in an attempt to authenticate
07:28its contents, with only partial success. The Post was able to authenticate emails from Hunter's days
07:33sitting on the board of Burisma, a Ukrainian energy company, and also from his business
07:38partnership with a number of Chinese associates.
07:40I don't know what he was doing. I know he was on the board,
07:43I found out he was on the board after he was on the board, and that was it."
07:47He was paid handsomely for these endeavors, and admitted in his memoir that his hefty income was
07:51a major factor enabling his addictions during that period. As to whether the laptop contained
07:56any evidence of criminal wrongdoing, The Post's analysis indicated that an unknown number of
08:00individuals other than Biden had accessed the laptop's hard drive and written files to it.
08:05There is no evidence that President Biden was involved in any of Hunter Biden's business
08:10dealings."
08:10As Johns Hopkins University security researcher Matt Green summed it up, the drive is a mess.
08:16In September 2023, in one of the biggest news stories of the year, Biden was indicted on three
08:21firearms charges. He was found guilty of all three offenses in June 2024,
08:26meaning that he is now a convicted felon.
08:28I've made mistakes in my life.
08:29The story goes back to 2018, when Biden decided to purchase a Colt Cobra .38 handgun from Star
08:35Quest Shooters & Survival Supply in Wilmington, Delaware. The law requires that gun purchasers
08:40fill out a form which includes a question concerning drug use. Biden completed the form,
08:44in which he stated that he was drug-free, and received the handgun soon after.
08:48But as Biden's memoir plainly states, at the time of the purchase, Biden was addicted to
08:53illegal drugs, a fact that was later confirmed by testimony from former partners, as well as
08:58text message evidence. The charges against him include making a false statement on a gun purchase
09:02form, lying to a gun dealer, and illegally possessing the .38, which he retained for
09:0611 days before his partner disposed of it. Biden faces a maximum of 25 years in prison for the
09:12crimes, though legal experts say he'll likely receive a much lighter sentence as this is a
09:17first-time offense.
09:18No one was harmed, after all, by this gun.
09:22In December 2023, Biden was indicted on nine tax charges, three felonies, and six misdemeanors,
09:27claiming that he, quote,
09:28"...spent millions of dollars on an extravagant lifestyle rather than paying his tax bills
09:33between 2016 and 2019."
09:35The charges followed a lengthy investigation into Biden's financial dealings, and after a
09:40potential plea deal fell through, prosecutors claim Biden overlooked $1.4 million in taxes in
09:46the late 2010s. And though Biden's bill was finally paid in 2020 by a third party, a year after he
09:52reportedly regained sobriety, he faces a maximum of 17 years in prison if found guilty.
09:57I have fallen, and I have gotten up.
09:59Biden's lawyers have claimed that even the firearms case against him was politically
10:03tainted, with a potential plea deal collapsing prior to sentencing as a result of what the
10:07Biden team claims was Republican pressure on the prosecution to reject the plea deal and take the
10:12case to court. It remains to be seen what will happen now that President Biden is dropped out
10:17of the 2024 presidential race.
10:20Throughout his often turbulent life, Biden has always been able to count on one thing,
10:24the love and support of his father. The younger Biden expressed as much when, in 2019, it was
10:30widely speculated that his personal troubles might throw a monkey wrench into Joe Biden's
10:34run at the presidency. In a statement to Vanity Fair, Biden didn't mince words, saying,
10:38"...I believe that my father has become an ongoing symbol of what it means to keep on
10:43fighting for what is good in oneself, in others and in our country. I can tell you that I wouldn't
10:48be alive today if my dad hadn't kept fighting for me, too. My father has always been proud of me,
10:53and he remains proud of me today. He loves me, and he loves the American people."
10:57"...My dad doesn't have to defend me. My dad only has to love me, and my dad loves me unequivocally."
11:03That support has never wavered. In 2022, President Biden told CNN's Jake Tapper,
11:09"...I have great confidence in my son. I love him, and he's on a straight and narrow,
11:14and he has been for a couple years now, and I'm just so proud of him."
11:18If you or anyone you know needs help with addiction issues, help is available. Visit
11:22the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration website or contact
11:26SAMHSA's National Helpline at 1-800-662-HELP, 1-800-662-4357.